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life which are now known to be effective agents in the spread of
292
infectious diseases like the bubonic plague. Nothing is surer than
that at this point the ethics of Buddhism must sooner or later feel
the modifying influence of Western science.

The Buddhist As an efficient force in promoting a spirit of the

spirit of broadest toleration, Buddhism holds a unique place
toleration
among the great religious and ethical systems of the
293
world. An edict of the Buddhist Emperor Asoka, dating from the
third century b.c., inculcates the practice of toleration in these
words: “A man must not do reverence to his own sect by disparaging
that of another man for trivial reasons. Depreciation should be for
adequate reasons only, because the sects of other people deserve
reverence for one reason or another.”
The spirit of this imperial edict has been obeyed wherever the
word of the Buddha has prevailed. “There is no record known to
me,” writes Rhys Davids, “in the whole long history of Buddhism,
throughout the many centuries where its followers have been for
such lengthened periods supreme, of any persecution by the
294
Buddhists of the followers of any other faith.”

Disesteem of Like Confucianism, Buddhism in its spirit and its

the military life
ethical teachings is, as we have seen, absolutely
opposed to the spirit of militarism in every form. Doubtless it has
been a potent force in fostering among the peoples of eastern Asia
an anti-military spirit and in creating a disesteem for the warlike
295
qualities of character. From one land—the Tartar land of Thibet—
296
it has banished absolutely the war spirit and practically war itself.
“It has taken all the fierceness out of the Mongols,” and thus
rendered useless the Great Wall built to check their raids into
297
China.
 Buddhism has been well characterized as the
Softening incarnation of sympathy with suffering. Inculcating a
effects on morality of gentleness, instilling tenderness toward
national
character of every living thing, it has exercised a softening
Buddhist influence upon the spirit and temper of every race
teachings that has received its teachings. We have in the
preceding chapter noted its humanizing effects upon Japanese
298
morality. Even in India, where after a comparatively short period
of supremacy it yielded sway again to Brahmanism, it left significant
traces of its brief dominance in the deepened humanitarianism of the
restored creed of the Brahmans, and in certain of those traits and
dispositions of the native races which render truthfully descriptive
the term “gentle Hindu.” “The land of meekness and gentleness,”
299
were the words used by a native Hindu at a recent Lake Mohonk
Conference to express the ethical character of India.

Historical There is deep significance for the moral evolution

significance of
the ethical
of the human race in this ethical propaganda of
unity created Buddhism. For just as Christianity has created an
by Buddhism ethical unity among the nations of the Western world,
so has Buddhism created a certain ethical unity among the races of
the Eastern world. The historical importance of this lies in the fact
that these two ethical systems, though differing in form and content,
are in spirit essentially the same: both are moralities of universalism;
300
both teach the brotherhood of man; both exalt the gentle and
self-denying virtues; both enjoin self-conquest; both inculcate the
duty of universal benevolence.
Because of this moral kinship, the ethical conquests of Buddhism
—and there is not a land in the Far East that has not felt its
influence—are in a degree supplemental to those of Christianity in
the West, and are thus an important step in the creation of the
ethical unity of the world. India and Japan are both nearer to us
ethically to-day than they would be, were it not for the modifying
influence of Buddhist teachings upon the ethical spirit and temper of
301
their peoples.
 CHAPTER VIII
THE ETHICS OF ZOROASTRIANISM: AN
IDEAL OF COMBAT

I. Philosophical and Religious Ideas which

created the Ethical Type

Religious In view of the mixed good and evil in the world,

dualism
thinkers of antiquity, outside of Israel and before the
rise of the Stoic philosophy in Greece, could not conceive the
universe as being set in motion and directed by one God infinite at
once in power and goodness. Even the most penetrating intellect of
Greece faltered in his search for unity: “We cannot suppose,” says
Plato, “that the universe is ordered by one soul; there must be more
than one, probably not less than two—one the author of good, and
302
the other of evil.” The seers of Israel alone reached with perfect
conviction the height of the great argument, and announced
confidently that He who is the author of the good in the world is the
author likewise of the evil: “I form the light and create the darkness;
I make peace and create evil,” are the words which the prophet
303
Isaiah puts in the mouth of Yahweh.
The religious thinkers of Persia never reached this lofty viewpoint.
It seemed to them, as it seemed to the Greek philosopher, that at
least two deities must have been concerned in the creation and
ordering of the universe. They believed in the existence of two great
powers: a good being, Ahura Mazda, the creator of light and of all
beneficent things; and an evil being, Ahriman, the author of
darkness and of all baneful creatures. Between these two powers
they conceived to be going on a fierce struggle for the mastery, in
304
which ultimate victory was assured to the good Ahura.
This Persian world philosophy reacted favorably upon the moral
character, and, as we shall see further on, contributed to create in
ancient Persia a deep consciousness of the eternal distinction
between good and evil, a profound sentiment of duty, and an active,
305
strenuous morality. It is when contrasted with the world
philosophy of Brahmanism and Buddhism that the ethical value of
this dualistic philosophy of the old Persian thinkers is best disclosed.

Conception of While it is true that the moral qualities attributed by

the character
of the supreme
a people to their gods are nothing more nor less than
god, Ahura the moral qualities possessed or revered by this
Mazda people themselves, still it is also true that the moral
nature thus given to the gods reacts powerfully upon the ethical life
of their worshipers and tends to mold their moral character after the
heavenly type. In a word, celestial morality is at once effect and
cause.
In the case of no other people of antiquity, except the people of
Israel, did the conception of deity exercise a greater influence upon
morality than in that of the ancient Persians. The supreme being,
Ahura Mazda, was conceived, as we have already noted, as the
creator of the light and of all good things, as the god of righteous
order and benevolence. He was the lover of truth. Truth was the
innermost essence of his being, as love is the innermost essence of
the God of Christianity. Farther on we shall see how this conception
of deity formed the mold in which was cast the Persian ideal of
moral excellence.

The ethical Ahura Mazda was the god of the sky. As time
character of
Mithra
passed, Mithra, the god of the sun, gradually came
into greater prominence and finally quite eclipsed the at first
supreme deity, Ahura. As the solar god he appropriated the ethical
attributes of the sky god and became preëeminently the god of light,
the champion of truth, and the avenger of lies. He it is who, when
306
not deceived, establisheth nations in victory and strength.
It was from this solar deity that Zoroastrianism in the later pre-
Christian centuries was called Mithraism, under which name, as we
shall see, it entered the Greco-Roman world and there became a
chief competitor with Christianity for the control and guidance of the
moral life of the European nations.

Doctrine of the The principle of Persian world philosophy which,

sacredness of
next after that of the divided government of the
the elements​— ​
universe, had probably the greatest consequences,
fire, earth, and
water and those not wholly favorable, for Persian morality,
was the principle of the purity and sacredness of the elements—fire,
earth, and water. From this principle or belief were deduced endless
ritual requirements whose aim was to preserve these elements from
pollution, or to restore their purity after defilement, and thus one
large division of the moral code embraced mainly artificial duties,
duties which had no vital relation to natural morality, that is, to
conduct deriving its sanction from the natural feelings of moral right
and wrong.

The personality As the great moral systems of Confucianism,

of a great
reformer,
Buddhism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism bear
Zarathustra each the impress of the moral consciousness of some
great teacher, so is it with Zoroastrianism. For the
moral ideal of Persia, while doubtless largely the creation of the
ethical feelings and convictions of the Iranian race, developed
through many centuries of race experiences, nevertheless bears the
unmistakable imprint of a unique personality. That the Zarathustra of
tradition represents a real historical personage, there can hardly be
307
longer a reasonable doubt.
 The time of Zarathustra’s mission probably falls in the first half of
the sixth century b.c. He thus belongs to that era in the history of
antiquity when, at various centers of culture, reform movements
announced the opening of a new epoch in the moral evolution of the
308
human race. The sum of what we may believe to have been his
moral teachings was that man’s full duty is purity and sincerity in
thought, word, and deed, and an untiring warfare against evil.

II. The Ideal

The essence of The distinctive character of the Persian moral ideal

the moral life
was determined by the Persian dualistic world
philosophy. The essence of the moral life is a struggle against evil.
The good man is the strong fighter with Ahura against Ahriman and
all his creations. There was no place in the ideal for those ascetic
virtues—celibacy, fasting, self-mortification—which conferred
309
sainthood in India.
The married state was regarded as superior to the unmarried:
“He who has children,” says the Zend-Avesta, “is far above the
310
childless man.” Fasting was condemned as ungodly, for “no one
311
who does not eat has strength to do heavy work of holiness”;
the well-fed man can fight better than the one who lessens his
vitality by fasting, can withstand the cold better, “can strive against
312
the wicked tyrant and smite him on the head.” The Zoroastrians
regarded Christianity, in the form in which they knew it, with
disapproval, because it exalted celibacy and made fasting a virtue.
This moral ideal which made life a strenuous battling for the right
was, after the ideal of the Hebrew prophets, the loftiest developed
by the ancient world. As we shall see immediately, it tended to make
the morality of the ancient Persians “a morality of vigor and
manliness.”

Truthfulness Among the special virtues making up the moral

the paramount
virtue
ideal, the highest place was assigned the virtue of
veracity. It is noteworthy how this virtue was, if not
created, at least fostered by the Persian conception of the supreme
313
god, Ahura Mazda, whose symbol was the light. As Ahriman was
the god of deceit and lies, so was Ahura the god of sincerity and
truth. This thought of deity made truthfulness a supreme virtue, for
man must in all things take for his model the good spirit on whose
side he battles.
Various testimonies bear witness to the high place assigned in the
scale of virtues to veracity. There was to be no liar among those
persons whom the Persian Noah (Yima) was commanded to bring
into the great underground abode, that the earth might be
repeopled with a superior race after the deadly cold of the long
314
winter. The punishment provided in the Zend-Avesta for false
swearing was terrible. The very first time one knowingly tells a lie
unto Mithra (the god adjured in taking an oath), “without waiting
until it is done again,” he shall be beaten on earth with twice seven
hundred stripes, and below in hell shall receive punishment harder
than the pain from the cutting off of limbs, from falling down a
315
precipice, from impalement.
What is especially noteworthy here is that Zoroastrian morals
recognize the universality of the law of truthfulness and require that
contracts made even with the unfaithful be faithfully kept: “Break
not the contract,” says the sacred law; ... “for Mithra stands for both
316
the faithful and the unfaithful.” Even more sacred than the
engagements of kinsman with kinsman are the engagements
between nations, for while a contract between members of the same
group is thirtyfold more binding than one between two strangers, a
 317
contract between two nations is a thousandfold more binding.
Here is raised a standard of international morality to which modern
statesmen and diplomatists have not yet attained.

The duty of Industry was another cardinal virtue of the

industry; the
ethics of labor
Zoroastrian ideal of character. Labor was enjoined not
only as honorable but as a sacred duty. Wedgwood
endeavors to show how this virtue was the outgrowth of the Persian
conception of the origin of the universe. In Indian thought the world
is not a creation, the work of a divine Creator; it is an emanation
from an impersonal, unconscious, primal principle. But in the Persian
world-view the universe is conceived as the work of a deity who
labors to give it form and shape. This conception of God as a worker
reacted powerfully upon the ideal of human excellence. Man must
imitate this divine virtue of labor. He must become a co-worker with
the good Ahura Mazda. Thus was labor idealized, and all work, even
318
the most lowly, made a sacred thing.
There is in this view doubtless an element of truth, but it is
probable that this duty of industry and thrift upon which such
emphasis is laid in the Zend-Avesta was in the beginning taught and
enforced by the limited area of fruitful soil and the necessity of
careful irrigation and tillage, and that only later the virtue thus
engendered received the sanction and support of religion. We may
infer this from the fact that agriculture was the most sacred of
occupations. “He who sows corn,” says the Zend-Avesta, “sows
319
righteousness.” To sow corn, grass, and fruit; to water dry
ground and to drain ground that is too wet—this is the duty of
320
man.

Animal ethics The Zoroastrian code, like the Laws of Manu, gives
a large place to man’s duties toward the lower animal creation. But
the animal ethics of the Iranian lawgiver are much more reasonable
than those of the Hindu legislator. The Buddhist, as we have seen, is
enjoined to spare every living thing; there is no distinction made
between useful animals and dangerous beasts and noxious reptiles.
To such an extreme is this regard for all life carried that agriculture,
though a permissible because a necessary occupation, still is looked
upon with disfavor for the reason that the plow injures the beings
321
living in the earth.
On the other hand, the Zoroastrian code distinguishes between
beneficent and baneful creatures, declares the first to have been
created by the good Ahura and the latter by the evil Ahriman, and
makes it the duty of the good man to protect and treat kindly all
useful animals, and to destroy all baneful creatures, including
noxious plants, such as weeds and brambles. Hence tilling the soil is
praised as an especially holy occupation, since the plow destroys the
thistles and weeds sown by the evil-disposed Ahriman.

Duty of Another important department of Persian ethics

protecting the
purity of the
was based on the idea of the holiness of the elements
elements —fire, earth, and water. Any defilement of these was a
sin, in some cases an unpardonable sin. For instance,
burying the corpse of a man or of an animal in the earth, and not
disinterring it within two years—“for that deed there is nothing that
can pay; ... it is a trespass for which there is no atonement for ever
322
and ever.” Equally stringent were the prohibitions against the
pollution of the holy elements fire and water, through casting into
323
them any unclean matter.
We shall perhaps best understand the moral value of such duties
as we have to do with in this division of Persian ethics, if we
compare them with those duties of the Christian code—Sabbath
observances—which are based on the idea of the holiness of a
certain portion of time. The ethical feelings evoked in the one case
are akin to those evoked in the other.
 In the Persian judgment of the soul after death we
The judgment have the most profound and spiritual conception of
of the dead; the the rewards and punishments of the hereafter that
soul the judge
of the soul has found expression in the ethical teachings of any
people. The soul is conceived as being judged by
itself. Upon its departure from this life the soul of the faithful is met
by a beautiful maiden, “fair as the fairest thing,” who says to him: “I
am thy own conscience; I was lovely and thou madest me still
lovelier; I was fair and thou madest me still fairer, through thy good
thought, thy good speech, and thy good deed.” And then the soul is
led into the paradise of endless light. But the soul of the wicked one
is met by a hideous old woman, “uglier than the ugliest thing,” who
is his own conscience. She says to him: “I am thy bad actions, O
youth of evil thoughts, of evil words, of evil deeds, of evil religion. It
is on account of thy will and actions that I am hideous and vile.” And
324
then the soul is led down into the hell of endless darkness.
The remarkable thing about all this is that this profound and
spiritual conception of “a mental heaven and hell with which we are
now familiar as the only future state recognized by intelligent
people” should have found expression at the early period when the
faith of the Zend-Avesta was formulated. “While mankind were
delivered up to the childish terrors of a future replete with horrors
visited upon them from without, the early Iranian sage announced
the eternal truth that the rewards of Heaven and the punishments of
Hell can only be from within. He gave us, we may fairly say, through
the systems which he has influenced, that great doctrine of
subjective recompense, which must work an essential change in the
325
mental habits of every one who receives it.”

III. The Practice

Effects of the In setting for man as his chief moral task a
moral ideal courageous warfare against evil, the Zoroastrian ethics
upon the produced a certain exaltation of character, and
Persian
character inspired strenuous activity motived by a deep sense of
duty. It created, or concurred with other causes in
creating, “a race of zealous Puritans,” a strong, self-reliant people,
326
who disdained all asceticism and indolence. Fasting, as we have
seen, was regarded as a crime because it weakens the body and
unfits one for active exertion.
It is instructive to place the masculine ideal of Persia alongside
the feminine ideal of Buddhist India and note the different effects of
these strongly contrasted standards of goodness upon the races
accepting them as the measure and rule of rational conduct and
duty. The Buddhist ideal, as we have seen, is made up largely of the
gentler, contemplative, passive virtues, the virtues of the recluse and
the ascetic. Its issue in character is quietism. In opposition to this,
the Zoroastrian ideal inspires sturdy, virile, active virtues, the moral
qualities of the reformer, of the toiler and the fighter. The natural
effect of the ideal was to confirm in the Persians all the seemingly
original strong ethical qualities of the Iranic race.

Persian We have seen that one of the chief requirements of

veneration for
the truth
the Zoroastrian code was truthfulness; man must be
veracious even as Ahura Mazda is veracious. Various
testimonies assure us that in respect to this virtue there was in
ancient Persia a commendable conformity of practice to theory. The
feeling for the beauty and nobility of truthfulness was much more
fully developed among the Persians than among any other people of
ancient or modern times. They were a truth-revering and a truth-
speaking people. Lying was the great crime. To lie, to deceive, was
to be a follower of Ahriman, the god of lies and deceit. Hence lying
was regarded as a species of treason against Ahura Mazda. “The
most disgraceful thing in the world,” affirms Herodotus, in his
account of the Persians, “they think, is to tell a lie; the next worse is
to owe a debt, because, among other reasons, the debtor is obliged
327
to tell lies.” In his report of the Persian system of education he
says, “The boys are taught to ride, to draw the bow, and to speak
328
the truth.” I was not wicked, nor a liar, is the substance and
purport of many a record of the ancient kings. Rawlinson adduces
this as evidence of their veneration for truthfulness. “The special
estimation in which truth was held among the Persians,” he says, “is
evidenced in a remarkable manner by the inscriptions of Darius,
where lying is taken as the representative of all evil. It is the great
calamity of the usurpation of the pseudo-Smerdis, that ‘then the lie
became abounding in the land.’ ‘The Evil One (?) invented lies that
they should deceive the state.’ Darius is favored by Ormazd,
‘because he was not a heretic, nor a liar, nor a tyrant.’ His
successors are exhorted not to cherish, but to cast into utter
perdition, ‘the man who may be a liar, or who may be an evildoer.’
His great fear is lest it may be thought that any part of the record
which he has set up has been ‘falsely related,’ and he even abstains
from relating certain events of his reign ‘lest to him who may
hereafter peruse the tablet, the many deeds that have been done by
329
him may seem to be ‘falsely recorded.’”
The Persian kings, shaming in this all other nations ancient and
330
modern, kept sacredly their pledged word; only once were they
ever even charged with having broken a treaty with a foreign
331
power.
That truthfulness was a national virtue of the Persians is further
attested by the fact that Herodotus represents them as always
relying implicitly upon every tale told them by the lying Greeks
whom they had taken captive. It never seemed to occur to them
that even an enemy could be guilty of so awful a blasphemy as
lying. It was this trait which led to their undoing at Salamis by the
332
unscrupulous and mendacious Themistocles.
 That exaltation of character which we have
Influence of remarked as springing naturally from the moral dignity
the ideal upon with which man was invested by being made an
Persian history
associate of the good Ahura in his struggle with the
wicked Ahriman may be noticed especially in the aims and
undertakings of the Persian monarchs in the period before the moral
decadence of the Iranian civilization set in, and while the strength of
the ethical appeal of the Zoroastrian ideal was yet unimpaired. This
appears in all their records, which make the aim of their conquests
to be the overthrow of the powers of evil and disorder and the
setting up of a kingdom of righteousness in the world. The
inscriptions of Darius I read like the letters of the Puritan Cromwell.
Indeed, just as it was the masculine moral ideal of English
Puritanism which helped to make England great, and strong to play
her part in the transactions of modern times, so we may believe it
was the strenuous moral ideal of Zoroastrianism that helped to make
Persia great, and strong to play her great rôle in the affairs of the
ancient world. In truth, the ideal is still an unexpended force in
history. It seems to have given immortality to the people that it
inspired; for it can hardly be doubted that it is largely owing to their
active practical morality that the Parsees in India, the
representatives to-day of the old Zoroastrian faith, constitute such a
dominant element in the Indian communities of which they form a
333
part.
 CHAPTER IX
THE MORAL EVOLUTION IN ISRAEL: AN
IDEAL OF OBEDIENCE TO A REVEALED LAW

I. The Religious Basis of Hebrew Morality

Introductory: To the pious Hebrew the rainbow, which to the

Israel’s historic
esthetic Greek was merely the beautiful pathway of
task a moral
one Iris, the messenger of Olympus, was Yahweh’s bow
hung out from the dark retreating thundercloud as a
sign of righteous anger spent and the pledge of a divine covenant
and promise. In this ethical interpretation by the Hebrew spirit of
this portent is foretokened the history and mission of ancient Israel.
It was her allotted task to interpret in ethical terms the phenomena
of the world of nature and the drama of human life and history. And
it was her happy lot to become the teacher to mankind of the truth
of an alone and righteous God, and to be the creator of a moral
ideal which is to-day the highest ethical standard of all the races of
the Western world, and the most vital moral force at work in
universal history.
In the short account which we shall give of Hebrew morality we
shall adopt a mode of treatment somewhat different from that
followed in describing the moral systems of the peoples already
passed in review, for the reason that in the case of the ancient
Hebrews the historical material is sufficiently abundant to enable us
to trace step by step the development of the ethical ideal and to
watch the gradual clarification of the moral consciousness of the
 334
race. Hence, after speaking of the religious ideas which formed
the basis of the moral code, we shall sketch briefly the evolution of
the rudimentary morality of the tribal age of the nation into the high
ideal of the prophets of the later time.

The conception We have seen how the Persian view of deity

of deity;
monolatry and
molded Persian morality. In a still more decisive way
monotheism did the Hebrew idea of God, of his character and his
relation to Israel and the world, shape and mold the
335
moral ideal of the race.
When the Hebrews in the second millennium before Christ
appeared in history, they were in possession of a stock of ideas
concerning the gods which was, in all essentials save one, altogether
like that held by their Semitic kinsmen of the various lands of
southwestern Asia. The single essential point of difference between
their religious belief and that of their neighbors was this: the nations
about them were polytheists; they were monolatrists; that is, the
Hebrews, while they believed in many gods, worshiped only one
god, their tribal god Yahweh. As Stade expresses it, “the old Israelite
336
was a theoretical polytheist, but a practical monotheist.”
There is scarcely need that we add in qualification of this, that
when the Hebrews first appeared in history they were not all
monolatrists. The multitude were then, and for a long time
thereafter, polytheists. All that can be affirmed is that in the earliest
times of their history there were among them teachers of
monolatrism, teachers who inculcated the duty of worshiping a
single god, the patron and champion of the nation.
Through what experiences and under what tuition these teachers
of Israel made the passage in thought from polytheism to
monolatrism we need not now inquire. For our purpose we need
simply note the fact and emphasize its supreme historical
importance. It marks the beginning of a divergent evolution in
religious belief and ethical conviction which in the lapse of time was
to lead Israel far apart from her Semitic kinsmen, and make her the
standard bearer of a universal religion and a universal morality. For
monolatry was with the prophets and seers of Israel only the first
step toward monotheism, the doctrine that there is only one God,
the Universal Father. This idea of deity was not reached much before
the time of the Second Isaiah. Along with this later view of Yahweh
there came the thought and conviction that he is a God of absolute
righteousness. This conception of God and of his character was, as
we shall see, an idea charged with the deepest significance not only
for the ethical development in Israel but for the moral life of all
mankind.

The belief in a After this conception of Yahweh, first as a jealous

supernaturally
revealed law
tribal deity and later as the sole God and Universal
Father, the belief in a supernaturally revealed law
wherein all the duties of man were made known was the most
potent force in molding the moral ideal of Israel. It was this belief
which made the chief duty of man to be unquestioning obedience to
the divine commandments; for the revealed law was the measure of
duty—what it enjoined was right, what it forbade was wrong.
This investiture of an outer law, conceived to be of supernatural
origin, with sovereign authority over man’s every act, and the
subordination to it of the inner law of the individual conscience, had
consequences of vast importance for the ethical evolution not only in
ancient Israel but also among all the peoples whose moral ideal was
essentially an inheritance from her. For where the full duty of man is
made to consist in obedience to the minute requirements of an
external law there is inevitably created a morality made up largely of
artificial ritual duties, and as intelligence grows and the moral
consciousness deepens and clarifies, there necessarily arises a
conflict between this conventional morality and the natural morality
of the human reason and conscience. In such a conflict, in this way
created, within the moral life of Israel centers the dramatic interest
of her moral history.
 There was a special reason why the Israelites felt
Special ground that their first duty was absolute obedience to the
of the revealed will of Yahweh. They possessed a tradition
Israelites’
feeling that which told how their fathers were serfs in the land of
obedience to Egypt; how Yahweh, through his servant Moses, had
the law was intervened in their behalf, and with a strong arm and
their highest
duty with mighty signs had brought them up out of the
land of bondage; and how at Mt. Sinai he had entered
into a covenant with them in which he pledged to them his powerful
protection on condition of their fidelity in his worship and obedience
to all his commandments.
This belief was the germ out of which grew most of what was
337
unique in the ethical development of Israel. It played exactly the
same part in creating and molding the religious conscience of Israel
that the Christian’s belief in the descent of the Son of God into the
world and his voluntary death to effect man’s deliverance has had in
molding the religious conscience of Christendom. As we advance in
our study we shall see how largely the moral consciousness of the
Israelites was a creation of this belief in a most sacred covenant
between Yahweh and their fathers at the “Terrible Mount” in the
wilderness.

The rite of We have seen that religion on the lower levels of

sacrifice
culture consists largely in sacrifice; that is, in gifts or
offerings either to the spirits of the dead or to the gods. The religion
of the ancient Hebrews did not differ in this respect from the religion
338
of other peoples in the same stage of culture. But the evolution
of the rite of sacrifice among the Israelites differs from its
development among all other peoples in that, under the influence of
the Hebrew spirit, the rite was gradually reduced to symbolism and
spiritualized. In this process it underwent the most remarkable
metamorphoses. Beginning with meat and drink offerings from man
to God, it ends with God giving himself a sacrifice for man. The
system thus transformed became the great inspirer of ethical
sentiment and a unique vehicle of moral instruction.

The vagueness The Israelite’s thought of death and of the after life
of the belief in
an after life
also reacted powerfully upon his moral feelings and
colored all his ethical speculations; for, like the
conceptions held of God, the notions entertained of man’s lot after
death, as we have seen in the case of the ancient Egyptians, has far-
reaching consequences for the moral life.
Now the Hebrew conception of the future state was the same as
the Babylonian. Sheol, like the Babylonian Arallu, was a vague and
shadowy region beneath the earth, a sad and dismal place which
received without distinction the good and the bad. The same fate
was allotted all who went down to the grave: “The small and the
339
great are there; and the servant is free from his master.” There
was no return there for good, or for evil: “But the dead know not
340
anything, neither have they any more a reward.” Memory and
hope were there dead: “For in death there is no remembrance of
thee.... They that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy
341
truth.”
We shall see later how this vague and feebly held idea of the
future life reacted upon the evolution of the moral consciousness in
Israel, how deeply it influenced the troubled ethical speculations of
the more thoughtful minds of the nation, and how it inspired
theories of the moral order of the world which have not yet lost their
342
power over the thoughts and the conduct of men. We need in
this place merely to point out how it was the absence of a clearly
defined belief in a life of rewards and punishments in another world
that created, or helped to create, the Messianic ideal, one of the
most fruitful conceptions, in its ethical outcomes, that ever entered
into the mind of man.
 II. The Evolution of the Moral Ideal

1. The Development up to the Exile

The primitive The history of Hebrew morals is the record of a

moral code
long and slow evolution. The primitive code with
which the development began was the code of Semitic nomadism. It
was essentially the same as that which to-day governs the conduct
of the practically unchanged kinsmen of the Hebrews, the Bedouin
of Arabia and neighboring lands. It was the morality of the kinship
343
group. The principle of communal responsibility, which affords
the key to a large part of the moral history of Israel, had not yet
been challenged as unethical, and blood revenge was a most sacred
duty. The circle covered by the moral feelings was still narrow; there
was practically no sentiment of duty or obligation toward tribes or
nations outside the group of tribes constituting the people of Israel.
The conception of Yahweh as a jealous national god prevented the
growth of feelings which might have formed the basis of a true
international morality. The wars which the Israelites waged against
their enemies were wars of ruthless slaughter and rapine.
344
This rudimentary morality is summarized in the Decalogue, for
the Ten Commandments are indisputably of a high antiquity. One
mark of the primitive character of this legislation is the negative
345
form of the commandments. Where there is need of the “thou
shalt not,” the moral life is still on a low plane. The aim and purpose
of the law thus worded are restraint and repression. There is a wide
interval in moral chronology between the morality of the Ten Words
and that of the Sermon on the Mount. In this earlier code there is
only the slightest recognition of the truth that the truly moral life
consists not in refraining from evil but in doing good. The nomads of
the desert for whom these negative commands were framed,
forbidding mostly crude, coarse crimes, were evidently a long way
yet from that level of moral attainment where the only law is the law
of love and liberty.

The moral That period of transition which marks the passage

anarchy of the
age of the
of the Israelite tribes from the nomadic pastoral life of
Judges the desert to a settled agricultural life in Palestine may
be instructively compared with that transition period in
the history of Europe which followed the migration of the German
tribes and their settlement in the provinces of the disrupted Roman
Empire. It was an epoch characterized by the rapid decay of the clan
and tribal organization, with an accompanying loss of the rude
virtues of the nomadic and pastoral life, and the acquisition of the
vices of the civilized or semicivilized communities among which they
had thrust themselves and whose lands they had forcibly seized.
Especially upon the religious system, which in Israel was ever
closely bound up with morality, was felt the reaction of the new
environment. Many foreign elements adopted from the Canaanite
peoples were incorporated with it, while the national god Yahweh, as
conceived by the popular imagination, tended to become sanguinary,
capricious, and unjust. He became eminently a god of war, and is for
his people right or wrong. Thus a chief bulwark of morality was
impaired. The result was a moral interregnum. The old standards
and rules of conduct lost their sanction. Every man did that which
346
was right in his own eyes.

Prophetism: its The necessities of the situation called into

different
elements
existence the monarchy (about 1050 b.c.). Then
followed the disruption of the kingdom (about 953
b.c.). The significant matter in the moral domain during the period of
347
the united and the divided kingdom was the appearance of
teachers called prophets or seers, men who were believed to speak
the word given them by Yahweh. This emergence of prophetism in
Israel is beyond controversy one of the most important phenomena
in the moral history of the world.
 348
There were in this prophetism various elements. First, it
contained a nomadic element; that is, some of the prophets were
men who looked backward to the simple pastoral life of the desert as
the ideal moral life. They regarded civilization as the sum of all evils.
Their reading of history was, in the words of Wellhausen, that “as
the human race goes forward in civilization, it goes backward in the
fear of God.” Second, there was in it a socialistic element. These
prophets were the first socialists. Theirs was the first passionate plea
for the poor, the wretched, and the heavy-burdened. Third, it
contained a predictive element. The prophets were regarded as
seers, as foretellers of future events. Fourth, there was in this
prophetism an element of pure intuitional morality which was in
irreconcilable antagonism to all legal ritual morality. Fifth, it
contained a monotheistic element. The later prophets were
distinctively teachers of the doctrine that there is only one God,
beside whom there is no other.
Of these several elements the predictive, or prophetic in the
popular sense, has been given such undue prominence that Hebrew
prophetism in the minds of many stands for little else than a
supernatural forecasting of future events. But, in truth, this is the
element of least importance. In the words of Kuenen, the business
of the prophets was “not to communicate what shall happen, but to
349
insist upon what ought to happen.” They were preachers of
individual and social righteousness. It is this ethical element, forming
the very heart and core of their message, which makes the
appearance of prophetism in Israel a matter of such transcendent
importance for universal history. Our main task in the following
pages of this chapter will be to point out this moral element in the
message of the prophets, to show how the conception of Yahweh
was by them moralized, and how the morality they inculcated
became purer and more elevated as the centuries passed, till the
evolution culminated in the lofty teachings of the Prophet of
Nazareth.
 The real history of Hebrew prophetism opens with
The beginnings the appearance in the northern kingdom, about the
of historical beginning of the ninth century b.c., of the great
prophetism:
Elijah and prophets Elijah and Elisha. It was the moral
Elisha degeneracy of the times of the monarchy, the inrush
of the hateful vices of civilization,—the greed of
350
land and of wealth, the cruel inequalities of the new society, the
selfish luxury of the rich, the harsh oppression of the poor, the
forgetting of men’s kinship, the substitution of the worship of other
gods for the sole worship of Yahweh,—it was all this which called out
the vehement protest of these teachers of social justice and national
righteousness.
It was, however, a very different prophetism from that of the later
seers of Israel which was represented by these early teachers. There
was in it a large nomadic element. Its representatives looked back to
the times of the simple pastoral life of the fathers as the Golden Age
of Israel. They hated civilization, that grossly material civilization
which Israel, under the lead of an idolatrous and luxurious court,
was now adopting from the surrounding nations, and looked upon it
as “the sum of all evils.” They were, furthermore, monolatrists rather
than monotheists. They believed in sacrifice; but sacrifices must not
be offered to strange gods—only to Yahweh. They were fanatical in
their zeal for the worship of Israel’s patron God; but even here there
was an ethical element, for in their view the triumph of the worship
of Yahweh over that of the Baals meant a triumph of the simple,
severe, desert morality over the voluptuousness and the nameless
vices of the Canaanite civilization.
This early prophetism, in a word, was a sort of Puritanism. Renan
calls it “this terrible prophetism.” It was fierce, cruel, fanatical,
intolerant, like English Puritanism. Indeed, it can best be studied in
this modern seventeenth-century prophetism, which was essentially
a revival of it. But notwithstanding the imperfect character of this
early prophetism, because of the true ethical element it
351
contained, its appearance in Israel and its successful fight
against a sensuous idolatry was a matter of vast moral import, for
here in this narrow, intolerant monolatry is the real historical
beginning of that long religious-ethical development which lends
chief significance to the story of Israel, and constitutes a main
interest of the history of European civilization. In the words of
Renan, “The prophetism which struggled under Ahab and triumphed
under Jehu is ... upon the whole the most decisive event in the
history of Israel. It forms the commencement of the chain which,
352
after nine hundred years, found the last link in Jesus.”

The moral The second link in this chain was formed by the
advance
represented by
prophets Amos and Hosea, who delivered their
message about the middle of the eighth century.
Amos (760 b.c.)
and Hosea Amos was the earlier. There is in his message the note
(738–735 b.c.)
of true prophetism. His thought of Yahweh is that he
is a God who hates iniquity and loves righteousness. What angers
him is not idolatry or the worship of other gods, but social wrongs
353
and injustice—wickedness in every form. He is angry with Israel
because there has been stored up violence and robbery in the
354
palace; because of the luxury and self-indulgence of the rich;
because of the treading upon the poor and the taking from him
burdens of wheat; because of the taking of bribes and the turning
355
aside of the poor in the gate from their right; because of the
falsifying of the balances by deceit that the poor may be bought for
356
silver and the needy for a pair of shoes. And what pleases
Yahweh is not fast days and sacrifices, but justice and
357
righteousness: “I hate, ... I despise your fast days,” declares
Yahweh. “Though ye offer me burnt offerings and meat offerings, I
358
will not accept.” “But let judgment run down as water and
359
righteousness as a mighty stream.”
A generation later the prophet Hosea repeats the same message;
namely, that what angers Yahweh is moral evil—lying, swearing,
stealing, and killing. He puts in the mouth of Yahweh these words:
“For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God
360
more than burnt offerings.”
There is here a notable ethical advance over the word to Israel of
the prophets of the preceding century. The thought of Amos and
Hosea that it is social wrongdoing that angers Yahweh is indeed no
new thought, for we meet with this conception of the moral
character of God in the teachings of the earlier prophets; what is
new is the emphasis which is laid upon it. Here we reach ethical
361
monolatry; ethical monotheism lies not far in the future.

The ideal of the The morality of Amos and Hosea infolded the germ
brotherhood of
nations and
of ethical cosmopolitanism. The conviction that the
universal peace government of Yahweh is founded on absolute justice
and righteousness led to the conviction of its ultimate
universality, “for right is everywhere right, and wrong is everywhere
wrong.” The political situation in the Semitic world at this time
fostered the thought thus awakened. The predominant fact in
international relations in the latter half of the eighth century was the
growth of the Assyrian Empire. In its expansion it had already
engulfed many of the smaller states of western Asia, and Assyria
had become a world power. Political unity suggested now, as it did
when Rome had established a world empire, religious and ethical
unity. Yahweh, Israel’s God of justice and right, is the suzerain of all
other gods and peoples. He will establish a world-wide kingdom, and
all nations shall acknowledge his righteous rule.
As representatives of this broadening vision we have the great
prophets Isaiah and Micah, who, proclaiming the universal reach of
the law of right and justice, held aloft a noble ethical ideal of the
brotherhood of nations and universal peace. Seers by virtue of their
conviction of the absoluteness, the oneness and sovereignty, of the
moral law, they foretold the coming of a time in the last days when
all the nations of the earth should form a federation under the
suzerainty of Israel with Jerusalem as the world capital: “Out of Zion
shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and
he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people;
and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears
into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
362
neither shall they learn war any more.”
This is the first distinct expression in Hebrew literature, or in that
of any race, of the idea of the brotherhood of man and a federated
world. The lofty ideal has never faded from the eyes of men. It has
inspired all the noblest visions of world unity and peace through the
war-troubled ages, and is in the world of to-day the source and
spring of much of that ethical idealism which with prophetic faith
and conviction proclaims a federated world, with the nations
dwelling together in peace and amity, as the one divine event toward
which all history moves.
With this lofty ethical universalism in the teachings of Isaiah and
Micah was joined a simple personal and social morality of the human
heart and reason. These prophets were at one with Amos and Hosea
in proclaiming that what Yahweh delights in is not sacrifices and the
observance of new moons and Sabbaths, but cleanliness of life and
services of love. Hear Isaiah as he repeats the words of the Lord: “I
delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats....
Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth.... Cease
to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed,
363
judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.” And listen to Micah:
“Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the
high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves
of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams and
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?... He hath shewed thee, O man,
what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do
364
justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

The prophetic The prophets of the eighth century were the first of
spirit creates a
the literary prophets; that is, the first of those who
unique ethicalemployed literature as the vehicle of their message to
literature
Israel. Hence here our attention is called to a matter
of supreme significance for universal morality—the ethicalizing of the
mythology and traditional history of the Hebrew people.
It was during the age of the kings that the mass of cosmological
myths and legends borrowed from Babylonia,—doubtless largely
through contact with Assyria,—the traditions of the patriarchs, and
the story of the sojourn in Egypt and the Exodus, all of which had
been transmitted from the foretime orally or in writing, was worked
over and edited afresh, in which process it received the indelible
stamp of the deeper and truer moral consciousness of this later age.
For though probably little of this work was done by the prophets
themselves, it was done by men who wrote under the inspiration of
the new thoughts of God and of his moral government which had
been awakened in the souls of the great teachers of Israel. The
polytheistic elements of these myths and traditions and their grosser
and more archaic immoralities were pruned away, while at the same
time they were given a monotheistic cast and a truer morality was
breathed into them. In a word, all this literary material was censored
by the growing moral consciousness of Israel. The outcome was the
creation of a literature absolutely unique in its moral educative
worth.
Thus the remolded and moralized Chaldean account of the
creation of the world and the beginnings of human history came to
form the basis of the opening chapters of Genesis, whose influence
upon Hebrew morality, through molding Israel’s idea of the character
of Yahweh and of his relations to man, it would hardly be possible to
exaggerate. Also the tradition of the Exodus, given now its final form
and received by the later generations of Israel as an historically true
account of the experiences of their fathers, left an ineffaceable
impress upon the mind and heart of the Hebrew nation, determining
largely their ideas as to their chief moral obligations as the chosen
and covenanted people of Yahweh. It was this tradition of their
heroic past which was the inspiration of the moral strivings of the
nation. Furthermore, all this literary material, thus reshaped and
colored by the growing monotheistic ideas of the teachers of Israel
and bearing the stamp of their gradually deepening moral
consciousness, and in this form transmitted to the Aryan nations of
the West, was destined to become one of the most important factors
not merely in the religious but especially in the moral life of the
European peoples.

The ethicalizing Just as the myths and traditions, in part borrowed

of pagan
festivals and
from neighboring peoples and in part transmitted from
cults Israel’s own foretime, were transformed and moralized
by the ethical genius of the Hebrew spirit, so were the
institutions and festivals borrowed by the Israelites from kindred
Semitic peoples, and particularly from the Canaanites, transmuted
365
and moralized. Permeated by the ethical spirit of Israel’s great
teachers and transformed into moral symbols, these originally
nonethical agricultural cults and festivals were given a distinct
educative value.
Among these pagan institutions thus moralized was the festival or
366
rest day of the Sabbath. Filled with ethical meaning and
consecrated to a religious-moral purpose, this originally pagan lunar
festival was made a most important means of moral instruction and
367
discipline. This borrowing and moralizing by Israel of this festival
has an almost exact parallel in the later borrowing and moralizing by
the Christian Church of the pagan festival of the winter solstice,
which has given Christendom one of its most beautiful anniversaries,
one which takes precedence of all others in its power to evoke the
tenderest altruistic sentiments.
As with the Sabbath, so was it with all the festivals which the
Israelites, after their settlement in Palestine and during the period
when they were passing from the nomadic to the agricultural life,
adopted from the Canaanite peoples among whom they were
dwelling. All of these in the course of time were turned from their
original purpose, were cleansed of immoral and sensuous elements,
and were thus made the means of awakening moral feelings and
developing moral character.
This transforming power of the ethical genius of Israel finds a
true historical parallel in the esthetic genius of ancient Hellas, which,
receiving from every side elements of art and general culture,
368
inspired them all with the beauty and energy of her own spirit.
“Israel,” as Cornill finely says, “resembles in spiritual things the
fabulous King Midas, who turned everything he touched into gold.”

The dual The effect of the capture of Samaria by the

morality of theAssyrians in 722 b.c. and the carrying away into
Deuteronomic
code captivity of the flower of the Ten Tribes was to put an
end to prophetism in the North and to make Judah in
the South the center of the movement which had such significance
for the moral life of the world.
During the century and a half that passed between the fall of the
northern kingdom and the destruction of Jerusalem by the
Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, only one great prophet appeared
in Judah. This was Jeremiah, who prophesied in the reign of King
Josiah, just a little time before the Captivity.
It was during the reign of this king that there appeared a book
which, excepting the Gospels of the New Testament, has had a
greater influence upon the general evolution of morality than any
other book ever written. This was a work known as the Book of
Deuteronomy, that is, the repetition of the law. Before the discovery
of the Laws of Hammurabi this was the oldest known code of laws.
The book contains much archaic material—traditions, customs,
judicial decisions, laws, and rituals—manifestly handed down from
the earliest times in Israel, with additions made at the moment of its
appearance, and all bearing plainly the stamp of the spirit and
temper of these later times. Hence it comes that there are two
moralities embodied in the work—an atavistic ritual morality and a
progressive social morality.
 In that part of the code which has to do with the
The ritual ethics of ritualism the dominant motive of the editors
ethics of the or compilers springs from a dread and abhorrence of
code
idolatry, like the dread and abhorrence of heresy in
medieval Christendom. Yahweh will divide his worship with no other
god. Israel had gone after other gods and Yahweh had given her
into the hands of the Assyrians. A like fate awaited Judah if she
served any other than him: “Ye shall not go after other gods, or the
gods of the people which are round about you, lest the anger of the
Lord be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of
369
the earth,” is the first commandment with threatening.
Fear that Yahweh would do unto Judah as he had done unto
Israel awakened the conscience of the nation. Idolatry was
suppressed; the high places on which incense was burned unto the
Baals were defiled, and the altars and the images of the strange
gods were broken down and ground into dust.
This reform movement practically ended the long struggle which
had gone on now for six hundred years and more between
polytheism and the rising monotheism of the people of Israel. But
unfortunately while the monotheistic element of the religion of
Yahweh was brought out by the reform in sharper outline, the ethical
element was obscured. The religion that was now made the
exclusive worship was really little more than a pagan cult. It
consisted in the careful keeping of feast days and the observance of
the rites and sacrifices of the Temple—an inheritance largely from
the heathen nations around about Israel. Nothing could have been
more opposed to true prophetism. It was the triumph of reactionary
ritualism.
This victory of ritualism has exerted an almost incalculable
influence upon the development of morality from the time of King
Josiah down to the present day. The immediate effect upon
prophetism in Judah was most lamentable. “Deuteronomy simply
confirmed the belief that religion was concerned with ritual rather
370
than with morality.” And so the outcome of the promulgation of a